Central Turkey sits on the Anatolian Plate, a block squeezed westward as the Arabian and Eurasian plates converge. This tectonic vice drives the North and East Anatolian faults, two of the world's most dangerous strike-slip fault systems, making the country one of the most earthquake-prone in the Mediterranean.
The devastating February 2023 earthquakes, twin ruptures of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 on the East Anatolian Fault, killed more than fifty thousand people across the region. Central Anatolia is also rich in ancient volcanism: Mount Erciyes and Hasan Dağı tower over the landscape, and past eruptions carved the soft tuff formations of Cappadocia.